We’re back at the Boys’ Town HEART Vocational Training Centre for a second week, turning the spotlight on aspiring chefs.

Willingston Dwyer, Level Two Student

Willingston Dwyer transitioned from being a machine operator to getting himself on the register as a culinary student at the Boys’ Town HEART Vocational Training Centre last September. Six months into his tutelage, he’s enthusiastic about the path he’s chosen to follow. “What drew me in is the art of preparing food,” the 22-year old Waterford High School graduate said, sharing that long before joining the HEART programme, he would often experiment at home with his own chicken and sandwich recipes.

Leaving his factory job in August 2009, Willingston told Thursday Food he was “sitting at home when my sister’s friend, a past student of the HEART school and now a chef at Terra Nova, recommended it to me.” The Greater Portmore resident said the experience gleaned at HEART has proven “really great so far… I’ve learnt many new approaches to food preparation”. On Willingston’s radar in terms of future planning is advancing to the Level Three course, and then moving on to the locally-based Culinary Institute of America. Ideally, he would love to work overseas when his studies are completed. “I think the opportunities are better there … I have a friend working as a chef in Canada at a restaurant and based on his achievement, I would prefer to go abroad and look a way out for my family and myself.”

Beverly Richards, Level Two Student

Life’s trials and heartbreak could have broken her completely, but Beverly Richards’ indomitable spirit kept her focused. The Level Two student at the HEART Boys’ Town Centre lost her three-year-old daughter Rushiel to leukaemia in 2009, and though the loss was an emotional tragedy for the young mother, her will to further herself academically did not die. The Clarendon native was pursuing a housekeeping course at Clarendon College Evening Institute when her daughter’s illness worsened and it obviously disrupted her ability to attend school, as she had to shuttle between hospital visits in Kingston and back home. Twenty-four-old Beverly reflects that the time after Rushiel’s passing was “mournful and hectic”. Nonetheless, she chose to enrol at HEART last year. With no space available in the housekeeping course she wanted to pursue, Beverly signed up for the culinary classes instead. So far, she’s found it an enriching experience. “Things I didn’t know before, I now do… and they have taught me different traditions of food I never knew,” she explained. Currently being exposed to entrepreneurship training in her course studies, Beverly revealed she has dreams of some day opening her own pastry business, given her innate fancy for baking.

Lashawn Henry, Level Two student

Fresh out of Mona High School, 18-year-old Lashawn Henry was intent on following her dream of becoming a pastry chef. For her, the Boys’ Town HEART Training Centre represented a sensible option worth pursuing if she was to be any closer to fulfilling the dream. The light-hearted and vivacious Lashawn related that her interest in baking is due to her grandmother Elaine Downie, whose deft pastry skills (birthday and cheese cakes included) so tantalised her tastebuds, that she vowed to seek formal training. Midway through her Level Two course, Lashawn gives it nothing but rave reviews. “Food preparation is something I love,” she noted. “I have gained much knowledge in the time I have been here.”

Lashawn shared that in December last year, she and several classmates were dispatched for work experience at the Terra Nova Hotel where she was happy to “help out with the pastry … and sometimes we were put on the range (to assist with stove-prepared meals)”. Post-HEART, she’s weighing two career choices: either working on the north coast hotel circuit or being employed on a cruise line. “I would like to experience what it’s like on the ship or to work outside of Kingston since that’s where most tourists go,” she rationalises.